As a developer who started noodling on 8 bit BASIC, the power of a web browser that is essentially a universal, network-capable application engine is beyond amazing.
As a user, the constant misuse of dark patterns and the glut of careless unoptimized and insecure code and coders is nightmare fuel. Consider I grew up coding, trying to explain modern websites and web applications my folks is simply painful because quite often it just doesn't make sense. A lot of UX never actually asked a user how they want it to work, or disregarded their input.
The best websites for me are still those which adhere to pre web 2.0 design patterns. I find them easier to navigate and use, ie old reddit vs new - the new design doesn't bring anything useful other than nagware to register and install the app - reading a thread and click outside the main area by mistake, it navigates you back in history and you wait 10 seconds for all the ajax to finish popping into place. My old online banking interface was a simple list of my accounts and balances with links to common functions. The "new" app-inspired interface hides everything under animated menus and ugly graphs I don't need to want, while constant monte-carlo simulations mean basic features always move; my wife and I often have completely different UX, it's just another annoying half-baked web app with ajax popping in and out all over the place.
There's good stuff and well design applications of course. Shadertoy is amazing. For music there's fully-fledged DAW's in the browser - fantastic! Collaborative document editing in real time, brilliant!
But I think I am down with the concept of a different engine or mode for "web surfing" vs "web application execution" - it's a completely arbitrary distinction I know, but as a user I've got a completely different set of wants and needs when I'm just surfing, vs when I need an "application."
As a user, the constant misuse of dark patterns and the glut of careless unoptimized and insecure code and coders is nightmare fuel. Consider I grew up coding, trying to explain modern websites and web applications my folks is simply painful because quite often it just doesn't make sense. A lot of UX never actually asked a user how they want it to work, or disregarded their input.
The best websites for me are still those which adhere to pre web 2.0 design patterns. I find them easier to navigate and use, ie old reddit vs new - the new design doesn't bring anything useful other than nagware to register and install the app - reading a thread and click outside the main area by mistake, it navigates you back in history and you wait 10 seconds for all the ajax to finish popping into place. My old online banking interface was a simple list of my accounts and balances with links to common functions. The "new" app-inspired interface hides everything under animated menus and ugly graphs I don't need to want, while constant monte-carlo simulations mean basic features always move; my wife and I often have completely different UX, it's just another annoying half-baked web app with ajax popping in and out all over the place.
There's good stuff and well design applications of course. Shadertoy is amazing. For music there's fully-fledged DAW's in the browser - fantastic! Collaborative document editing in real time, brilliant!
But I think I am down with the concept of a different engine or mode for "web surfing" vs "web application execution" - it's a completely arbitrary distinction I know, but as a user I've got a completely different set of wants and needs when I'm just surfing, vs when I need an "application."